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Interview: Baath leader calls for peace talks Robert Dreyfuss
The following is a slightly edited transcript of an interview with Salah al-Mukhtar, an Iraqi Baath Party official who has belonged to the party for 47 years. At the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mukhtar was Iraq’s ambassador to Vietnam. Previously, he served as ambassador to India, at Iraq’s mission to the United Nations in New York, and as an official in Iraqi information ministry. Although he stressed that he is not an official spokesma!
n for the party or for the resistance in Iraq, it is clear from his comments that he remains close to those leading the fight in Iraq. Before 2003, Mukhtar was close to Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi foreign minister, who is currently in U.S. custody. In the interview, Mukhtar calls for talks between the United States and the Baath Party (...) The demands of the resistance have been published many times in the last two years. Among them are the full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the compensation for Iraqis and Iraq, the rebuilding of both the state and the legitimate national army of Iraq. Within the context of accepting these demands the peaceful withdrawal of the U.S. army from Iraq will be guaranteed...
“What's in a number? Accountability” Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat's Dream
Dear Sarah Sewall, In What's the Story Behind 30,000 Iraqi Deaths? (By Sarah Sewall, the Washington Post, Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B02) you write: The Lancet study relied on a door-to-door survey of Iraqi households in 33 neighborhoods. The surveyors asked for details of deaths in the months before and after the invasion and found a significantly higher death rate after. But the approach was flawed. War is not like a pande!
mic; it comes in pockets. And the study itself qualified its conclusions, acknowledging that the figure could range enormously between 8,000 and 194,000. From what you write, it seems either you didn’t read the study or you didn’t understand it. So, I won’t comment on your flawed approach. More interestingly, your article ends with these words: What's in a number? Accountability....
...Where to begin? First, the only radical Islamists burning books and oppressing women in Iraq are the Shiite fundamentalist parties, backed by Iran, whose power is being supported by the U.S. armed forces. Second, the supposed enemy in Iraq is not a "global terrorist movement" but an indigenous, nationalist resistance that wants nothing more than the departure of U.S. troops. The spectre of "an empire of fear across the region" is a wildly exaggerated threat that exists !
only in Bush’s fevered imagination...
On Saturday, eight 'high value' Iraqis held without charge for over two years by the United States were released.They included Dr Huda Ammash, a distinguished internationally renowned, environmental biologist, Professor at Baghdad University, whose earned her PhD at the University of Missouri. Her father, former Iraqi Ambassador to the US, under the government of Abdul Karim Kassem (1958-1963) was executed in a purge to stamp authority by Saddam in 1981. In the 1990!
's Dr Ammash was, ironically offered a seat in the Legislature. When Saddam offered a position to say:'No thanks, I've my career plan mapped out, was not an option', but her academic career remained her passion and primary focus. Arrested by US troops, this brave, gentle woman suddenly became 'Mrs Anthrax' and featured on America's assinine playing cards of their 'most wanted', in the wild west, last chance saloon Iraq became after April 2003...
Eight boys return from Iraq to tell the tale of horror Amrita Chaudhry, Ludhiana Newsline
Ludhiana, December 20: After returning from a nightmarish eight-month stay in Iraq, these boys advise the Punjabi youth to give up dollar dreams. The tale of sheer hell comprising of hunger, war and torture recounted by this batch of boys is hair-raising. And their story sounds much like that narrated by boys stuck earlier in foreign lands, defrauded by travel agents (...) Add Baljinder Singh and Karanpal, both from Amritsar!
, ''Here we were locked up in a small area which had a heavy wiring all around. We were made to do menial tasks for US soldiers like picking up their excreta, washing their clothes, picking up their cigarette butts — all this for 50 US dollars a month, and a plate of boiled rice once a day. If we raised our voice we were tortured.’’...
MWC Special, Formal Complaint to ICC over Coalition War Crimes Dr Gideon Polya, MWC Political Editor
...On 14 October 2004 I made a formal complaint against the Australian Government and its Coalition allies over war crimes in Iraq, specifically illegal invasion and subsequent horrendous civilian mortality in contravention of international law (for details of this complaint and a prior complaint sent to the 2 dozen top law officers of Australia see: here). Since that complaint was made, it can be estimated fr!
om the latest UNICEF reports (see: here) that a further 560,000 under-5 year old infants have died in US Coalition-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan in gross contravention of the Geneva Conventions for the protection of civilians in time of war (1949)...
Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 20 December 2005 Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. http://www.freearabvoice.org
In a bulletin posted at 8:35pm Mecca time Tuesday night, Mafkarat al-Islam reported from al-Habbaniyah that Iraqi Resistance forces had unleashed a violent barrage on the US base in the city located west of Baghdad. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the barrage had begun about a quarter hour before and was st!
ill continuing as he filed his report. Located near the environs of the US base, the correspondent wrote that more than 15 mortar rounds had been fired at the American-occupied facility, most of them blasting directly into it. At the time of writing, sirens were wailing inside the base as pillars of thick smoke billowed up from inside the compound...
Canadian Torture Charges Against Bush Rejected – LAW Promises Another Appeal AfterDowningStreet.org
In a brief judgment today, Madam Justice Deborah Satanove of the Supreme Court of British Columbia rejected an appeal by the Canadian-based Lawyers Against the War (LAW) against the staying of torture charges laid against President George W. Bush last year. The judgment, which came after three weeks of deliberation but was less than five pages in length, declared the appeal "an abuse of process". Relying on a conte!
sted nine-word passage in the transcript of the secret hearing held last year, Judge Satanove declared that the real intentions of LAW were "to use the criminal procedure as a forum to express political views"...
A Monumental War Crime ... DU Gerry Hiles, Iraqwar.ru
...Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S., the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war. Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, "The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the 'Gulf War !
Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military."...
Bush's Criminal, Toxic Presidency Poisons All Areas of Government, Not Just Spying Rob Kall
...It's time we start asking who knew Bush was breaking the law and when they knew. Because they should be charged with aiding and abetting the crime. The corruption among Republicans has become more than a malodour. It is a permeating, unrelenting, seemingly ubiquitous stench that is choking democracy, poisoning America's future.,,
GI Special 3D50: The Lone Whistle - December 20, 2005 www.militaryproject.org
...Abu Salam has lost four children to US operations in Falluja. Bilal, a five-year-old boy, and Nawal, a three-year-old girl, were killed in the April offensive; two sons, aged 15 and 18, disappeared after Operation Phantom Fury. "My 18-year-old was a fighter, a resister who stayed to defend his city; there was no shame in that," Abu Salam said. "He was no terrorist, but I will not hide his participation." Abu Salam has no idea how his!
sons may have died, but he fears their bodies were consigned to the river or one of the mass graves. He has since joined the resistance himself. "They are treading on our honour," he said of US forces. "They want to destroy us because we said no to occupation, but by the will of God they will not be able to.",,,
U.S. and Iraqi troops Tuesday discovered the bodies of 14 people who apparently had been tortured in the embattled city of Fallujah, local reports said. Some of the bodies reportedly were bound. The discovery came amid a spike in violence as Iraq continues to count ballots from last week's parliamentary elections. Sunni leaders alleged widespread fraud...
The answer to the mystery of the NSA snooping scandal - why did they break the law when it was so ludicrously easy to get FISA warrants? - appears to be developing: they weren't just wiretapping, they were data mining. They were using Echelon to 'Able Danger' the whole country (this is Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, which is supposedly dead, in action). The problem is that FISA was enacted prior to the current capability for data mining, and didn't anticipate how ubiquitous it!
could be. The reason they couldn't use FISA is that they would have had to obtain a FISA warrant for every person in the country...
The President of the United States George W. Bush and his National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, ("Condi" to her friend) have gone on the record emphatically stating that the United States does not employ torture as a method of obtaining information from detainees. Yet Vice President Dick Cheney recently went before Congress to try to exempt the CIA from proposed anti-torture legislation. What exactly is torture, and what methods do the CIA employ?...
While President Bush insists that the only options in Iraq are "victory or defeat," there is in fact a wide spectrum of options in between, most of which center around the idea of a negotiated settlement of the war. And the key to such a deal is to trade a pledge for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq for a ceasefire and the participation of the nationalist, mostly Sunni-led resistance in a government of national unity. That’s the message from the resistance itself, which also pledges to gu!
arantee the safe departure of U.S. forces from Iraq in the context of a truce. And they want to talk...
Families of soldiers killed in Iraq lose fight for public inquiry Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian
Families of British soldiers killed in Iraq failed to force the government to hold a public inquiry into why Britain went to war yesterday. They want Tony Blair "to be held accountable" for taking the country into a war which they say was unlawful and "based on a series of lies" (...) Rose Gentle, from Glasgow, whose son Gordon, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra last year, was one of those who brought t!
he case. She said after the ruling: "The families believe the decision to invade Iraq was based on deceit and lies. Our sons and husbands were sent to their deaths on the backs of these lies. Their deaths were unnecessary, as were the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi people"...
Bush's Enemies List. Why Did Bush Commit an Illegal, Impeachable Act When All His Lawyers Had to Do Was Walk Into a Secret Court? A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Okay, so here's the real deal. In the wake of the Nixon's abuses of our Constitution, our liberties and our privacy, Congress (in 1978) set up a secret court that the Executive Branch must -- by law -- go to if it is seeking wiretaps or surveillance of foreigners or Americans "suspected" of terrorism or espionage. This is the law. It was passed by Congress to !
prevent the kind of abuse that the Bush Administration is guilty of. This law is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This secret court (the last we knew it was headed by GOP hack partisan federal judge David Sentelle -- who got Poindexter and North off the hook and put Kenneth Starr on the job -- but that may have changed) has never been known to deny a government request for wiretapping, surveillance or searches...
Iraq's election result: a divided nation Patrick Cockburn
...The break-up of Iraq has been brought closer by the election. The great majority of people who went to the polls voted as Shia, Sunni or Kurds - and not as Iraqis. The forces pulling Iraq apart are stronger than those holding it together. The election, billed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair as the birth of a new Iraqi state may in fact prove to be its funeral...
..."Meanwhile, seven Iraqis were killed either by gunmen or US troops in separate incidents around Tikrit, around 190 kilometers north of Baghdad, police said.
The police said four of the victims were killed by US troops as they approached their patrols in Balad ... Meanwhile, police said US soldiers shot dead a truck driver who drove too close to an army patrol in Latifiya 40 kilometers south of Baghdad. The U.S. army warns drivers to keep at least a 100 meters distance from military vehicles...
The latest figures released by US Central Command show a dramatic rise in the number of air raids carried out in Iraq. Although receiving little coverage in the US media, the US air force, navy and marines have flown thousands of missions backing up US ground troops in Iraq this autumn (...) The air raids have been largely in the west of Iraq, hitting regions where fighters opposed to the US presence remain strong. Targets include Balad, Ramadi and the vicinity of B!
aghdad, according to the US military's Central Command...
Sunni Arabs call Baghdad election results fraudulent, demand redress JASON STRAZIUSO, AP
Sunni Arabs on Tuesday protested the partial election results released a day earlier, calling them a "falsification of the will of the people" and saying evidence of fraud was abundant. Sunni Arab officials suggested that the country's security and stability were at stake if their complaints about last week's parliamentary vote were not addressed. Officials concentrated their protests on results from Baghdad province, the cou!
ntry's biggest electoral district...
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